Sculpture

Sculptor redirects here. You may also be looking for Sculptor (constellation).

Sculpture is any three-dimensional form created as an artistic expression.

The term sculpture also refers to the artistic discipline, act or art of making sculpture, by the manipulation of materials or, in contemporary art, by designating an object or even an act as sculpture. The artist who does this is called a sculptor. Sculpture is also the collective term for a collection or genre of sculptures. i.e. Greek Classical Sculpture, or Exhibition of Sculpture.

The process of manipulating materials for sculpture is to sculpt. A sculpted object or material has been worked to resemble sculpture either by human hands or by nature. A figure or person can be sculpturesque meaning that it shares qualities with classical figurative sculpture or statue

Traditional materials

In his late writings, Joan Miró even proposed that some day sculptures might be made of gases; see gas sculpture.

Other materials used in modern and contemporary sculpture include:

the environment
polymers, and many other synthetic materials
textiles
metal
* aluminum
* mercury
glass
sand
water, ice, snow
terra cotta
balloons
liquid crystals
frozen blood, dead animals
found objects
sound

Perhaps the least elitist of these media is sand, as it is used by young and old to create sand castles.

Forms

Some of the forms of sculpture are:

Relief: sculpture still attached to a background, standing out from that ground in "High Relief" or "Low Relief" (bas relief)

Sculpture "in the round": designed by the sculptor to be viewed from any angle.

Free-standing sculpture

Mobile (See also Calder's Stabiles.)

Perhaps the majority of public art is sculpture. See also sculpture garden.

Sculptors

Sculptors include the Classical Greek masters, through Michelangelo Buonarroti, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance masters, to modern sculptors such as Henry Moore, Felix de Weldon and Alexander Ney.
:See also: List of sculptors

Greenfield Products Pty Ltd v. Rover-Scott Bonnar Ltd

The Australian copyright case of Greenfield Products Pty Ltd v. Rover-Scott Bonnar Ltd (1990) 17 IPR 417 is authority for the proposition that a thing not intended to be a sculpture is not a sculpture. This seems contrary to some famous examples of sculpture, including Marcel Duchamp's 1917 sculpture consisting of a porcelain urinal lying on its back, entitled "Fountain", and Carl Andre's sculpture "Equivalent III" exhibited in the Tate Gallery in 1978, consisting of bricks stacked in a rectangle.

Nudity

A Nude or 'unadorned' figure was in Greek classical sculpture a reference to the status or role of the depicted person, deity or other being. Athletes, priestesses and gods could be identified by their adornment or lack of it.
The Renaissance preoccupation with Greek classical imagery, such as the 4th century B.C. Doryphoros of Polykleitos, led to nude figurative statues being seen as the 'perfect form' of representation for the human body.
Subsequently, nudity in sculpture and painting has represented a form of ideal, be it innocence, openness or purity.
Nude sculptures are still common. As in painting, they are often made as exercises in efforts to understand the anatomical structure of the human body and develop skills that will provide a foundation for making clothed figurative work.

Nude statues are widely acceptable by most societies, largely due to the length of tradition that supports this form. Occasionally, the nude form draws objections, often by fundamentalist moral or religious groups who do not understand the context of what they are objecting to. Classic examples of this are the removal of penises from the Vatican collection of Greek sculpture and the addition of a fig leaf to a plaster cast of Michaelangelo's sculpture of David for Queen Victoria's visit to the British Museum.